Harris Downloading - Media Reports

[Keepitsimple]

The Ontario government has recently come to an arrangement whereby, over 10 years, the "damage caused by the Harris government downloading" can finally be reversed. Many news stories have appeared that completely neglect the other side of the equation - the uploading of all Education funding responsibility to the Province. At the time, Ontario - like all other provinces, was trying to dig itself out from Paul Martin's slashing of transfer payments for Social Programs like Healthcare and Education. At the same time, the province was held hostage by Teacher's unions who would pick on a weak school board and use the results as a template to blackmail all the other boards. There just wasn't enough money to sustain that kind of labour "relationship" going forward. To counter this Union tactic, the provincial government accepted responsibility for Education funding - removing it completely from property tax bills. In exchange, Harris downloaded some social services to the cities. Media stories create the impression that there was no offset to the downloading - conveniently omitting the Education funding uploading. I'd be curious to know how out-of-whack the equation really is - how much does Ontario actually spend on Primary Education and how does that really compare to the services that were downloaded? Secondly, given the history of pre-Harris Teacher's settlements (which were running at about 8% per year.....how much would Toronto (for example) be paying their school board if Harris had NOT instituted centralized bargaining and simply left the status quo. The fact that McGuinty has chosen not to complete his limited uploading until 2018 - a full 16 years after he formed his first majority government - pretty well validates the necessity of what was done.

Edited November 10, 2008 by Keepitsimple